Speaker 1: In the mid nineteen sixties, friends offered our family use
Speaker 1: of their cabin in the Great Basin near Baca, Nevada,
Speaker 1: only a few hours drive from our home in Eli.
Speaker 1: That part of the country is mostly barren, with a
Speaker 1: few pockets of beauty and mystery. It's where most of
Speaker 1: Nevada's rivers and streams go to did disappearing into the
Speaker 1: dry basin, only to tragically flow into the Great Salt Lake.
Speaker 1: We were financially challenged, not homeless or starving, but we
Speaker 1: definitely struggled and had some very lean times. It felt
Speaker 1: really good to tell people that we were going to
Speaker 1: the cabin. However, it wasn't the quaint, rustic lakeside log
Speaker 1: cabin or alpine chalet that one might have envisioned. After
Speaker 1: what seemed like a really long drive of some over
Speaker 1: rutted dirt roads up through a small canyon, we reached
Speaker 1: a tiny, ramshackle framed house. This pitiful thing looked a
Speaker 1: very out of place, and there wasn't another structure anywhere
Speaker 1: that we could see. I was momentarily disenchanted. The cabin
Speaker 1: consisted of only one room. At one side, there was
Speaker 1: a big iron stove, possibly a few cabinets. It had
Speaker 1: no running water or electricity. It had at least one
Speaker 1: window on each side and two doors front and back.
Speaker 1: The ladder opened onto a short path that led to
Speaker 1: a small creek surrounded by shade trees. Because of the
Speaker 1: property slope, they had leveled the cabin using pallets and
Speaker 1: shims on the downhill side. This made the front left
Speaker 1: side stand off the ground a couple of feet, making
Speaker 1: the windows on the sides fairly high up to anyone
Speaker 1: walking along. There wasn't much in the way of furnishings.
Speaker 1: A couple of old metal bed frames that someone had
Speaker 1: placed sheets of plywood on, and those served as couches
Speaker 1: and beds. Using sawhorses and wood slats, we made a
Speaker 1: tiny table by removing the plywood sheet, setting a sawhorse
Speaker 1: in the middle, and adding a one by six slant
Speaker 1: to each end for seating, and replacing the plywood crossways
Speaker 1: on the sawhorse for a table. Out there. We never
Speaker 1: encountered people. We never even saw another car. A badger
Speaker 1: would always pop up out of its burrow by the
Speaker 1: road to race our car as we neared the cabin,
Speaker 1: and as soon as he gave up the chase, he
Speaker 1: would duck back down in another hole. Our friend the badger,
Speaker 1: was one of the highlights of our visit. Mom watched
Speaker 1: out for him and would call out to us when
Speaker 1: she spotted him so we didn't miss out. She would
Speaker 1: slow down for a bit for him to keep up
Speaker 1: for as long as he could. Inside the cabin at night,
Speaker 1: mice would skid her back and forth over the floor,
Speaker 1: and in the daylight you could see their tiny prints
Speaker 1: in the dust. It was a little unnerving to hear
Speaker 1: them scurrying about at night. We really didn't mind the
Speaker 1: isolation so much, though. My three sisters and I love
Speaker 1: being out in the wilderness and roughing it. As far
Speaker 1: as my parents were concerned, the more remote the better.
Speaker 1: They hated sharing the great outdoors, and with few exceptions,
Speaker 1: camping and hiking were pretty much the only kind of
Speaker 1: vacation our family ever took. One day, we realized that
Speaker 1: we could dam up the creek with rocks to create
Speaker 1: a little pool for us to sit in, kind of
Speaker 1: like a hot tub, only filled with the icy mountain
Speaker 1: runoff on a hot day. It was divine. Overspill allowed
Speaker 1: the creek to still float within hiking distance. There was
Speaker 1: an abandoned garnet mine that reportedly had belonged to Alfred Hitchcock.
Speaker 1: We climbed huge dunes of garnets, where we had hoped
Speaker 1: to see shiny rids. We found heaps of dusky maroon pebbles,
Speaker 1: smaller than BB's in rough in texture, and if you
Speaker 1: tried to polish one, I think there might not be
Speaker 1: anything left. Possibly the larger stones had been extracted, leaving
Speaker 1: these which were likely industrial grade, if of any value.
Speaker 1: We had many happy stays at the cabin through the years,
Speaker 1: even when some of us were entering our teens, we
Speaker 1: still look forward to going. In the spring or summer
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy one, after the four of us had
Speaker 1: been staying with our grandparents, we were excited and waiting
Speaker 1: for our mom to pick us up because she had
Speaker 1: promised we'd go straight to the cabin. When mom arrived,
Speaker 1: we virtually pounced on her, our excitement running over. She
Speaker 1: seemed oddly reticent. I got the impression that she was
Speaker 1: hoping we'd forgotten. Before leaving, we had lunch where the
Speaker 1: subject of bigfoot came up. Our grandmother had started buying
Speaker 1: the National Inquirer. We had never seen a more Outrageous magazine,
Speaker 1: and the issue that we were most fascinated with was
Speaker 1: the one about the notorious Bigfoot creature. There were stills
Speaker 1: from the Patterson Gimlin film, artist depictions and eyewitness accounts,
Speaker 1: and photos of tracks that had been cast in maps
Speaker 1: that showed the locations of sightings. Our mother seemed a
Speaker 1: little bothered by the topic, and she kept trying to
Speaker 1: steer the conversation away from Bigfoot. Most of the drive
Speaker 1: to the cabin was unremarkable, but because I was kind
Speaker 1: of a pest and I realized the topic of Bigfoot
Speaker 1: made Mom uneasy, I continued to talk about it. My
Speaker 1: sisters picked up on my cues and joined in on
Speaker 1: the ruse. In our minds, we were just having some
Speaker 1: harmless fun and Mom listened, tight lipped, but finally retorted, Oh,
Speaker 1: that's just out there in California. It's not here. Oh no, oh, Mom,
Speaker 1: I said, they say they're seeing them all over now,
Speaker 1: even in Nevada. Of course I hadn't read or heard
Speaker 1: any such thing, but she went quiet again, so we
Speaker 1: decided to stop torturing her, and we soon forgot about
Speaker 1: it all For the rest of the drive. We took
Speaker 1: it in turns arguing and singing annoying road trip songs,
Speaker 1: or napping. We all perked up. However, when our faithful
Speaker 1: friend the Badger popped out of his burrow beside the
Speaker 1: road for a race he had never disappointed us. Everything
Speaker 1: seemed right for the moment. Our spirits dampened. However, when
Speaker 1: we saw the sorry state of our favorite getaway. The
Speaker 1: back door had been completely torn off and tossed down
Speaker 1: the hill, and the hinges were bent and twisted from
Speaker 1: the violent removal. There was no way we could set
Speaker 1: it back in, even if we had the tools, which
Speaker 1: we did not. The interior was full of leaves and
Speaker 1: dirt that had blown in. Sweeping the floor, we could
Speaker 1: see dried mud that had been tracked in. Mom was
Speaker 1: dismissive and said that she heard that hunters had been
Speaker 1: using the cabin. I wonder why they tore the back
Speaker 1: door off, because it was never locked. Even if it
Speaker 1: had been, they could have just broken the lock. Also,
Speaker 1: deer season was pretty cold, you'd think hunters would appreciate
Speaker 1: a door. Anyway, We shrugged it off and cleaned it
Speaker 1: up and went out to our pool for a dip.
Speaker 1: Our dam had been broken up in the preceding year
Speaker 1: during reconstruction, we silently cussed out those rude hunters. It
Speaker 1: wasn't the first time my favorite outdoor area had been
Speaker 1: spoiled by hunters, so we didn't think much more about it.
Speaker 1: It got dark and Mom's anxiety returned and intensified as
Speaker 1: the night wore on. We attacked a large sheet of
Speaker 1: heavy plastic she had found to cover the doorway. We
Speaker 1: hung it like a curtain. After dinner, we went to bed,
Speaker 1: everyone except Mom. She stayed up all night stoking the
Speaker 1: fire and the old iron coal and wood stove. I
Speaker 1: was a light sleeper and kept waking up because I
Speaker 1: heard her pacing now and then she'd rush over and
Speaker 1: she'd ask, are you okay? Are you girls okay? It
Speaker 1: was a little annoying, but I'd assure her that we
Speaker 1: were finding the plywood mattress was comfortable, and surprisingly it was.
Speaker 1: It was at that point I began to feel guilty
Speaker 1: for filling her head with the Bigfoot stories. But I
Speaker 1: never thought she'd taken us seriously. Besides, she was the
Speaker 1: bravest person I had ever known. Now I wish I
Speaker 1: had stayed awake with her or asked her to lie
Speaker 1: down with us, after all, she had driven nearly all day,
Speaker 1: but kids can be pretty self centered. During the night,
Speaker 1: it began to snow, with an average elevation of sixty
Speaker 1: eight hundred feet. It was the time of year that
Speaker 1: it could snow anytime, so it could have been as
Speaker 1: early as April or spring break, or between June through August.
Speaker 1: Not sure when exactly we were there, though I thought
Speaker 1: the gentle snow flurries were beautiful and peaceful until a sudden,
Speaker 1: loud wind gust blew the plastic sheeting that hung over
Speaker 1: the door and sent it flapping up into the room.
Speaker 1: It's possible that Mom's anxiousness was getting to me, because
Speaker 1: at the moment the wind blasted that plastic sheet, I
Speaker 1: sat uprightfully, expecting to see bigfoot standing in the doorway
Speaker 1: and roaring at us. But there was nothing but blackness
Speaker 1: that stared back at me, and only the wind howled.
Speaker 1: It was a frightening moment. Nonetheless, Mom scrambled to secure
Speaker 1: the plastic around the doorframe the edges, and we settled
Speaker 1: into an uneasy wait for daylight. We left the next day,
Speaker 1: never to return. For the most part, I thought it
Speaker 1: was just all a funny scare over nothing. Really. I
Speaker 1: don't recall any of us kids ever asking to go
Speaker 1: back in. Our parents never again suggested we go to
Speaker 1: the cabin again for a trip. Sorry, little Badger friend,
Speaker 1: we sure miss you now. In twenty twenty, my mother
Speaker 1: was eighty four and I was sixty one. She was
Speaker 1: bedridden and she had dementia. The television kept her occupied.
Speaker 1: One show she liked was Unsolved Mysteries, which usually covered
Speaker 1: crimes or disappearances. But one time, while I was taking
Speaker 1: care of her, an episode about Bigfoot came on. A
Speaker 1: little ways into it. Mom said, Oh, that's just silly.
Speaker 1: You don't think that's real, do you. I told her,
Speaker 1: I thought it was possible that they were real, that
Speaker 1: there were a lot of personal accounts, and I found
Speaker 1: many people who reported encounters quite credible. Mom's demeanor changed notably,
Speaker 1: so I paused the program. She told me something that
Speaker 1: had happened to her and dad at the cabin. It
Speaker 1: was the time they'd send us girl to stay at
Speaker 1: Grandma's that took advantage of being temporarily childless and went
Speaker 1: to the cabin. I find it odd neither of them
Speaker 1: until now had ever mentioned that they'd gone there alone,
Speaker 1: not that it would have mattered to us kids, but
Speaker 1: it's odd that they never said anything about it. Mom
Speaker 1: said she woke up in the middle of the night
Speaker 1: when something jiggled a doorknob. What or whoever it was
Speaker 1: was very large and heavy, and it went around the cabin,
Speaker 1: trying each door and windows, circling around and around. She
Speaker 1: said that she was afraid to even look at the
Speaker 1: windows for fear of what she might see. And she
Speaker 1: said that she felt kind of a terror that she'd
Speaker 1: never felt before. I could see how it still scared
Speaker 1: her to talk about it well. She woke my dad
Speaker 1: to tell him what was going on. They laid there listening,
Speaker 1: whispering only as necessary. They assumed it was a person,
Speaker 1: and Dad was concerned the person might be armed. He
Speaker 1: didn't want to force a confrontation in the dark with
Speaker 1: some one who obviously had an advantage on them, especially
Speaker 1: since he himself was not armed. They decided to pack
Speaker 1: up quickly at first like and made a mad dash
Speaker 1: to the car to leave. I asked my mom if
Speaker 1: she saw anything of what was outside the cabin that night.
Speaker 1: She said that we really couldn't see anything. It was
Speaker 1: just a shadowy outline, but it was very tall. In
Speaker 1: the early morning light, they saw it run off, zigzagging
Speaker 1: through the trees very fast. If it had been a person,
Speaker 1: there would have been no accommodations out there to run to,
Speaker 1: no nearby roads if they had come by a car.
Speaker 1: It was remote and mostly barren wilderness. After Mom and
Speaker 1: Dad's strange night, the next time she saw the cabin
Speaker 1: was alone with her daughters. She found it with the
Speaker 1: door ripped off in the mud tracked floors, and that
Speaker 1: must have been terrifying sight for her, especially knowing that
Speaker 1: we had no gun or any way to call for help.
Speaker 1: She probably should have left thin. I asked her why
Speaker 1: we didn't leave, and why she chose to stay. She
Speaker 1: admitted that she didn't want to disappoint us or let
Speaker 1: fear get the better of her. I think she hadn't
Speaker 1: shared with anyone until she told me last year. When
Speaker 1: I said it was odd that none of us ever
Speaker 1: asked to go back, she said, it wouldn't have done
Speaker 1: you any good anyway. I wasn't taking you back. We
Speaker 1: never really feared creatures of the wilderness, even though there
Speaker 1: are cougars and some black bears in the mountains and
Speaker 1: the high deserts of Nevada in Utah, where we spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time. On one camping trip up Wheeler Peak
Speaker 1: before there were any roads up there, when we were
Speaker 1: all pretty young, a mountain lion screamed at us all
Speaker 1: night long. Before we had set up camp. Dad had
Speaker 1: buried a deer carcass. He said, look like a mountain
Speaker 1: lion had been feeding on it. But he thought that
Speaker 1: the big cat was finished. The big cat disagreed loudly. Still,
Speaker 1: I don't remember being very scared even then, even though
Speaker 1: we had just slept out on the ground, no tent ever.
Speaker 1: We just slept under the stars, but til the cabin.
Speaker 1: That's how we camped under the stars. I never said so,
Speaker 1: but I hated it. Mom told me that she and
Speaker 1: Dad many years later, did make one last trip up
Speaker 1: to the cabin just to see it. They found it
Speaker 1: in even worse shape, and not just run down. The
Speaker 1: front door had also been ripped off like the back,
Speaker 1: and that heavy wrought iron stove had been ripped out.
Speaker 1: They found it busting up, lying in a ditch quite
Speaker 1: away from the house. I really can't imagine people doing that,
Speaker 1: even if they could have can you. It was a
Speaker 1: cold and moonlit night and my church group was meeting
Speaker 1: at Rocky Springs for a bonfire. After it got dark,
Speaker 1: the group came up with the idea to visit the
Speaker 1: old church. I was a little nervous, but I went
Speaker 1: along with the crowd. We went into the church and
Speaker 1: hit a few keys on the old organ that had
Speaker 1: been there for years, and then the girls decided to
Speaker 1: stroll through the dark cemetery. It was a loud crowd,
Speaker 1: and I told them not to be noisy so as
Speaker 1: not to disturb the dead. After a few hours, everybody
Speaker 1: left me there by myself. I eased down the church
Speaker 1: driveway by myself and took out a small fluorescent light
Speaker 1: I kept in my shirt pocket. I turned my light
Speaker 1: on in the darkness of night, feeling a little uneasy
Speaker 1: and nervous. It was at the foot of a drive
Speaker 1: by a cedar tree that was on my left side,
Speaker 1: which is still there today. All of a sudden, a
Speaker 1: piece of brick came flying from the cemetery. It hit
Speaker 1: the cedar tree branches and it nearly hit me. I
Speaker 1: looked around, but I couldn't see what through it. I
Speaker 1: jumped out and ran like a scared rabbit. Running as
Speaker 1: fast as I could, I got up in my truck
Speaker 1: and turned it on and got out of there. I
Speaker 1: don't know what threw that rock, but someone once told
Speaker 1: me that bigfoot guard cemeteries at night. Well. I went
Speaker 1: back there twenty years later, but this time I packed
Speaker 1: a pistol, not taking any chances. All those years later,
Speaker 1: I still felt uneasy around the old church. Had we
Speaker 1: disturbed the dead? Or was it a sasquatch. Here's another
Speaker 1: little fact. The whole town of Rocky Springs died from
Speaker 1: a rare disease, so don't drink the water if you
Speaker 1: go there to visit. I moved away from home as
Speaker 1: soon as I turned eighteen, and I found a place
Speaker 1: to rent thirty miles from where I worked. It was
Speaker 1: an old double wide trailer set back in the woods
Speaker 1: where I didn't have any neighbors to deal with, and
Speaker 1: I could do pretty much anything an eighteen year old
Speaker 1: farm kid could ever want. After living there for a week,
Speaker 1: I started noticing strange stuff, small things. At first, lights
Speaker 1: would be on that I knew were turned off. Stuff
Speaker 1: would go missing, only to turn up in places that
Speaker 1: didn't make any sense. Tools would disappear from whatever car
Speaker 1: I happened to be attempting to restore. At the time,
Speaker 1: I'd find them scattered around too far out to have
Speaker 1: been thrown even in a fit of rage, as anyone
Speaker 1: familiar with working on a car can relate to. Once,
Speaker 1: I was in the middle of replacing a radiator hose
Speaker 1: and I stopped to make a run to the convenience
Speaker 1: store for cigarettes. Before I left, I put a wrench
Speaker 1: that I was using on top of my toolbox, figured
Speaker 1: I'd only be gone for an hour at the most.
Speaker 1: When I got back, there was no sign of the wrench.
Speaker 1: Eventually I found it in the corner of an old
Speaker 1: lean to that later became my furs shd. After a
Speaker 1: few months, things got more weird. Doors would slam in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night, Dishes would break. Another time,
Speaker 1: I came home and all my silverware had been dumped
Speaker 1: out on the floor. A bottle of Scots that was
Speaker 1: given to me by a coworker exploded in the cupboard.
Speaker 1: And then things got worse, and eventually I started making
Speaker 1: plans to get out of there. But about that time
Speaker 1: I started hearing something walking around the house and yelling
Speaker 1: my name and telling me to come outside. Two weeks
Speaker 1: of that, I finally left and moved to Lebanon, Missouri.
Speaker 1: A lot way back to that house a few times,
Speaker 1: but it sat empty since I left. No one wants
Speaker 1: to live out there. It's too far from everything and
Speaker 1: there's no jobs close by. Now, let me tell you
Speaker 1: a story about my girlfriend at the time. The house
Speaker 1: she lived in was close to the site of a
Speaker 1: Union camp that was attacked by Confederate soldiers during the
Speaker 1: Civil War. Or one night she was out closing the
Speaker 1: chicken coop. While she was inside, she heard two men
Speaker 1: whispering what sounded like battle plans, something to the effect of,
Speaker 1: we'll bring the cavalry in from the west. They won't
Speaker 1: be able to head south because of the river. The
Speaker 1: artillery will hit them from the north, and they'll be
Speaker 1: dead before sunrise. And then I have one more story
Speaker 1: that took place two miles from my girlfriend's house. We
Speaker 1: were walking around in abandoned property, and by the look
Speaker 1: of things, the owner had gotten up in the middle
Speaker 1: of dinner, loaded everything into their sixties rambler and crashed
Speaker 1: it into a tree. There were still boxes and trunks
Speaker 1: containing clothes and other belongings on the way out, we
Speaker 1: started to feel like we were being followed. We noticed
Speaker 1: a strong odor, like rotting fish in a full outhouse
Speaker 1: in the heat of July. Close to the end of
Speaker 1: the driveway, I saw a pile of small animal bones,
Speaker 1: probably a cat a raccoon from the size. When we
Speaker 1: got back to the house, we talked it over and
Speaker 1: decided to go back and check it out some more.
Speaker 1: This time I had the sense to go more prepared,
Speaker 1: so I grabbed a handgun and an extra mag and
Speaker 1: I grabbed a machette and a headlamp and a shovel
Speaker 1: and a hatchet. When we returned, the smell was even stronger.
Speaker 1: We searched the old shop and the storm shelter, and
Speaker 1: after a while we decided to take a closer look
Speaker 1: at those bones. I noticed a cut on the inside
Speaker 1: of the animal spine. It looked like the throat had
Speaker 1: been cut. A little further away, my girlfriend found another
Speaker 1: pile and another one further along. Over the next few
Speaker 1: days we found three hundred and sixty five complete skeletons
Speaker 1: belonging to cats and small dogs, and they were placed
Speaker 1: in a circle around the house and the surrounding buildings.
Speaker 1: The whole time we were there, it felt like something
Speaker 1: was standing right behind us. I don't know what was
Speaker 1: going on or what was there with us, but I
Speaker 1: know I'll never visit that house again. For the greater
Speaker 1: part of my life, I never believed in things like sisquatch,
Speaker 1: But when I overheard my dad listening to your channel,
Speaker 1: I was converted. I live in western Washington State, and
Speaker 1: I have for most of my life. My parents have
Speaker 1: taken us fishing and hiking for years, and we're used
Speaker 1: to the forests of the Pacific Northwest. We live way
Speaker 1: down a dirt road that borders some old logging land,
Speaker 1: where my family and I often walk back there. We
Speaker 1: could hike out to the lakes and sometimes for a
Speaker 1: birthday get to go shooting at the old quarry well.
Speaker 1: One night a couple of years ago, a huge thunderstorm
Speaker 1: rolled into our area. The clouds were so thick that
Speaker 1: the sky had become a black abyss. There was thunder
Speaker 1: and lightning and rain in hell, and it was one
Speaker 1: hell of a tempest. That night, my family and I
Speaker 1: were watching a movie when my sister exclaimed that she
Speaker 1: had just seen lightning at once. My mom and dad
Speaker 1: and three youngest siblings and our dog Boaz, jumped up
Speaker 1: and went to the back door to watch the storm.
Speaker 1: My brother and I stayed behind to finish what we
Speaker 1: were doing, but within a few minutes, urged by the
Speaker 1: many oohs and ahs of the rest of our family,
Speaker 1: we ran to the back door to see what was
Speaker 1: going on. Well. The storm was spectacular. Lightning streaked across
Speaker 1: the dark backdrop of the clouds in a brilliant flash
Speaker 1: of white and purple, and thunder boomed the seconds after,
Speaker 1: as if celebrating the joys of lightning's intricate dance. Droplets
Speaker 1: of rain as large as marbles plummeted down to the
Speaker 1: earth and exploded into even or orbs of water as
Speaker 1: they hit the ground. It was a joyous and standing
Speaker 1: there watching the power and strength of nature as it
Speaker 1: displayed its awesome might to us. But we stood there
Speaker 1: watching the storm for a while until the lightning started
Speaker 1: to die down. Everyone went back inside to enjoy the
Speaker 1: rest of their evening except my brother and our dog
Speaker 1: and me. We were hoping to catch a few more
Speaker 1: glimpses of plasma in the sky from outside the back door.
Speaker 1: We waited outside for the next bolt of lightning, when
Speaker 1: bos started acting funny. It was walking around us and
Speaker 1: acting skittish. My brother let him back inside in exchange
Speaker 1: to confused. Look with me, that was weird, I said.
Speaker 1: A boez is a big dog, about thirty inches wide
Speaker 1: at the shoulder, and he's protective and he would usually
Speaker 1: throw himself at anything he deemed as dangerous before he
Speaker 1: let it get anywhere near us, so his behavior was
Speaker 1: very unusual. A few minutes later, a scream came roaring
Speaker 1: out of the edge of the woods. It was one
Speaker 1: of the most terrifying things I have ever experienced. To
Speaker 1: describe it, it would not be true to its nature.
Speaker 1: It was like an owl screech, but louder, fiercer, and
Speaker 1: fused with a wild man's howl, and it was coming
Speaker 1: from the edge of our woods, only one hundred feet
Speaker 1: from our back door. My brother and I locked eyes
Speaker 1: wide with fear, knowing it was no ordinary creature. It
Speaker 1: was something unknown and alien. We didn't wait to see
Speaker 1: if it would make its horrible call again. We bolted inside,
Speaker 1: scared to death of the unknown menace lurking in the
Speaker 1: walls of our forest. Our family oblivious to the sheer
Speaker 1: terror that we had just experienced was sitting down relaxing,
Speaker 1: having a grand old time watching their movie, and my
Speaker 1: dad asked us if we had seen any more lightning,
Speaker 1: and we told him that a creature was screaming from
Speaker 1: the woods. When we were done with our story. Our
Speaker 1: dad thought for a bit and then said it was
Speaker 1: probably just a cougar and that we had nothing to
Speaker 1: worry about. I argued back with him, it wasn't a cougar.
Speaker 1: I said, I'd heard what cougar screams sound like, and
Speaker 1: it was completely different. My dad still blew it off
Speaker 1: his children's over excited imaginations and he left it at that.
Speaker 1: We never talked about it since, but my brother and
Speaker 1: I will never forget that night. I had a good
Speaker 1: friend who drove a log truck until he passed away
Speaker 1: in two thousand and seven. Like a lot of old
Speaker 1: truck drivers, Jeffrey had his share of tall tales. There
Speaker 1: is a place about thirty miles from where I live
Speaker 1: in Georgia called Raytown. Jeffrey was born in there. Raytown
Speaker 1: is a very remote place. It's a hunter's paradise and
Speaker 1: also an area full of big timber. Over the years,
Speaker 1: we have done some logging in that area quite a bit.
Speaker 1: Jeffrey always claimed that Bigfoot roam the woods there, but
Speaker 1: I never really believed him until late one night in
Speaker 1: January of twenty and ten. My crew and I were
Speaker 1: working far back down along dirt road. At the time.
Speaker 1: I was driving the truck, but on this particular track
Speaker 1: we were hauling pulp wood, but we also had chippers
Speaker 1: set up to grind the smaller debris and hauled chips
Speaker 1: to bio mass plants about one hundred miles away. My
Speaker 1: sister had called me earlier in the day and asked
Speaker 1: if we could meet up and let my young nephew
Speaker 1: ride with me in the big truck. We met at
Speaker 1: a local restaurant around six pm, and my little buddy
Speaker 1: Cody hopped in with me, and we took off and
Speaker 1: headed for Raytown time a year. It was already dark
Speaker 1: when I picked up my nephew, and as we drove along,
Speaker 1: I told him that we were headed to a dark,
Speaker 1: spooky place. Well, Cody didn't mind. He was just happy
Speaker 1: to be in the truck with me. I even had
Speaker 1: to hit the jake brakes for him every few miles
Speaker 1: because he loved the sound of it. As we neared
Speaker 1: the dirt road. I told him not to worry, always
Speaker 1: have a ruger with me. We were five miles in
Speaker 1: on a dirt road when all of a sudden, something
Speaker 1: hit the hood of the truck. It sounded like a baseball.
Speaker 1: What the hell was that, I mumble to myself. On
Speaker 1: a dirt road, gravel wool, ping the fuel tanks and
Speaker 1: quarter fenders, and even ping against the headache rack. Those
Speaker 1: are familiar sounds, but this was different. It was intentional.
Speaker 1: Someone threw a big rock at the hood of my
Speaker 1: Peter Bilt. I knew no person would be out in
Speaker 1: those woods, fourteen miles from the nearest town on a
Speaker 1: twenty five degree night throwing rocks. Cody was pondering what
Speaker 1: could have thrown something at the truck, and I immediately
Speaker 1: thought about Jeffrey's bigfoot tales. I've always heard they throw
Speaker 1: rocks anyway. I couldn't speak for a few minutes, but
Speaker 1: I wasn't scared one bit. I finally believed Jeffrey, and
Speaker 1: it's a pity that he wasn't around for me to
Speaker 1: tell him my story. Twelve years ago, I was having
Speaker 1: a campfire at my house with my brother in law.
Speaker 1: We had a couple of beers so that we could
Speaker 1: unwind after a long day of coaching our travel soccer
Speaker 1: team in a tournament. It was a nice, clear summer
Speaker 1: night and I was looking up into the sky, watching
Speaker 1: the smoke from our campfire drift into the atmosphere. You
Speaker 1: can see the lights from some planes, and we were
Speaker 1: enjoying the evening. I glanced over at my brother in law.
Speaker 1: He was staring at the sky too, and he had
Speaker 1: a puzzled look on his face. What are you looking at,
Speaker 1: I asked him. I don't know what it is, he said.
Speaker 1: I looked up and saw six or so different colored
Speaker 1: flashing lights in a circular pattern. They didn't look like
Speaker 1: any plane or anything else that I had ever seen
Speaker 1: in the night sky before. It was motionless, high up
Speaker 1: in the sky, with no discernible sound coming from it
Speaker 1: that we could hear. We watched the lights for several minutes,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, they shot across the
Speaker 1: sky and they disappeared at a speed that was way
Speaker 1: too fast for any aircraft. I checked the news the
Speaker 1: next day and even reached out to a local UFO
Speaker 1: website to see if anyone had reported seeing it, but
Speaker 1: there was nothing. Now I'd like to tell you a
Speaker 1: story about once I went squatching. My extended family owns
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty acres of farmland in woods in
Speaker 1: rural western Pennsylvania. My cousin owns a huge A frame
Speaker 1: house on the property. Going away with this family and
Speaker 1: had just gotten a new puppy. He asked if I
Speaker 1: wanted to dog sit for the weekend and he would
Speaker 1: pay me for my time. Well, I jumped at the
Speaker 1: opportunity to hang out in this huge house all weekend
Speaker 1: and not be cramped at my parents' house. I've been
Speaker 1: interested in cryptozoology and aliens since I was a kid. Now.
Speaker 1: I remember watching In Search of with Leonard Nimoy and
Speaker 1: being interested in the mystery of it all at an
Speaker 1: early age. One night at the A frame I decided
Speaker 1: to go out with my flashlight and try to do
Speaker 1: some whoops and howls and tree knocking and listen for
Speaker 1: some kind of a response. The next thing I knew,
Speaker 1: fear swept over me like a light switch, and my
Speaker 1: thoughts turned panicked. What if I got a response, would
Speaker 1: that be a good thing, I thought to myself. And
Speaker 1: what if the creature was aggressive? I thought? Even Further,
Speaker 1: I grew up camping, boating, hunting, fishing, and I'm no
Speaker 1: stranger to the outdoors. I even wrote for a Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: outdoor magazine for several years as a fishing columnist. I
Speaker 1: don't scare easily in the woods, but that night was different.
Speaker 1: Headed back to the house as quickly as I could,
Speaker 1: and I locked the door behind me, and I grabbed
Speaker 1: a handgun and I sat on the couch. If I
Speaker 1: decided to go back out, I think I will find
Speaker 1: a partner to go with me for my own peace
Speaker 1: of mind. Okay, I hope you guys enjoyed those new stories.
Speaker 1: I think that was five or six new stories. Now
Speaker 1: I'm going to drop an archive story behind this, so
Speaker 1: if you begin to listen, you've already heard it. Just
Speaker 1: click away. But some people haven't heard all these, and
Speaker 1: I thought I would include some in videos going forward,
Speaker 1: but I'll always warn you. Thanks for joining me on
Speaker 1: the podcast, and we'll see you guys on the next one.
Speaker 1: Here comes an archive to podcast. Thanks. I can't remember
Speaker 1: when I got this story. It's been not too terribly long,
Speaker 1: but it's one of the craziest stories I've ever read,
Speaker 1: and I've never I've never thought about this theory. What
Speaker 1: you're going to learn about now. For the first five
Speaker 1: minutes or so, she's going to give some background on
Speaker 1: where she's from, what she does. Hang on because this
Speaker 1: is a long story and it really gets good. I
Speaker 1: mean it gets really creepy. Here's what Jenna writes. How
Speaker 1: the past year has changed my life. I cannot begin
Speaker 1: to express, but I will give it my best shot.
Speaker 1: My name is Jenna and I'm a twenty nine year
Speaker 1: old female geologist spieleeologist, and I was working for the
Speaker 1: government within the Department of Geological Survey up until recently.
Speaker 1: We were responsible to explore and map out old mind
Speaker 1: chefs and cave systems in the Eastern United States. There
Speaker 1: are several of these teams working throughout the country in
Speaker 1: places like the Rockies, Texas, the Midwest, and in Washington State.
Speaker 1: I've heard that there are also teams in Canada and
Speaker 1: Mexico as well. I have been spilunking since I was
Speaker 1: five years old with my father and older brothers, so
Speaker 1: it became who I was and not just what I did.
Speaker 1: My experience through the years made me useful to this project.
Speaker 1: I was recruited in my last year of graduate school
Speaker 1: at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire by Joseph who had
Speaker 1: become my supervisor and mentor. My eight teammates were all
Speaker 1: roughly the same age, and we had various degrees of
Speaker 1: interest of study, including engineering, archaeology, biology, herpetology and volcanology,
Speaker 1: as well as other fields. We were a mixture of
Speaker 1: seven men and two women, and all have a love
Speaker 1: for the world below the surface, resulting in our pale
Speaker 1: skin in very thin frames. Because we spent most of
Speaker 1: the days in the dark out of the sunlight, it
Speaker 1: wasn't all that bad for me being a pale skinned
Speaker 1: ginger and ten minutes in the sun I would turn
Speaker 1: into a lobster. The meals that we take are mostly
Speaker 1: small protein bars and water. It's easier to carry with us,
Speaker 1: especially when we stayed in the cave system overnight. During
Speaker 1: the expeditions there were sometimes ten miles deeper more. We
Speaker 1: have done many of these over the past four years.
Speaker 1: We have made some remarkable discoveries and we've mapped out
Speaker 1: miles of cave systems in West Virginia and Kentucky using
Speaker 1: a combination of GPR or ground penetration radar and light
Speaker 1: ar from the surface, as well as some new technology
Speaker 1: that will make for some amazing new discoveries in the future.
Speaker 1: Our average expedition would start when we entered a cave
Speaker 1: or a small hole in a mountainside and started to
Speaker 1: evaluate if it was safe. Understand that we we have
Speaker 1: left more caves than we explored due to what appeared
Speaker 1: to be unsafe, or when our equipment detected gas. Once
Speaker 1: we determine that it is safe, we begin to move
Speaker 1: deeper into the cave and into the twilight zone. There
Speaker 1: is no presence of light in the dark zone, and
Speaker 1: we see nothing if we turn out the lights. Often
Speaker 1: we find chambers and passages off to the sides, or
Speaker 1: even drop offs in sinkholes. We can use special drones
Speaker 1: with lights and cameras to fly over the drop offs
Speaker 1: or down the sinkholes, or on top of shelves or
Speaker 1: ledges above our reach to see if there are any
Speaker 1: points of interest below or above us that we need
Speaker 1: to explore. Using those drones have given us access to
Speaker 1: new passages and chambers that no human has ever seen,
Speaker 1: some of which have led to miles of passages and
Speaker 1: enormous chambers, one of which was over one hundred feet
Speaker 1: tall and three football feels long fifty yards wide, and
Speaker 1: we nicknamed that one the ballroom. We have discovered entrances
Speaker 1: to cave systems that were not noticeable from the top
Speaker 1: side or outside the cave. Some of the entrances have
Speaker 1: been behind waterfalls, crevices, and cliffs, and under roots of
Speaker 1: large trees, and even behind some dead falls that appear
Speaker 1: to have been pushed up against it to conceal the entrance.
Speaker 1: We have mapped some systems that will travel miles into
Speaker 1: another exit or entrance, with the longest one being twenty
Speaker 1: seven miles in southeast Kentucky and it goes into Tennessee,
Speaker 1: and that required us to stay in the cave for
Speaker 1: over two weeks. We have scanner units mounted onto our
Speaker 1: helmets that capture three D imagery of the cave as
Speaker 1: we travel, and we also use GPS signals that rarely
Speaker 1: are detected above the surface, but we still have them
Speaker 1: and occasionally get closer enough to the surface to get
Speaker 1: our data to the base camp to be collected. We
Speaker 1: have other tools that we have used in the past.
Speaker 1: One includes a buoy with a GPS unit. We dropped
Speaker 1: one in a fast moving underground River near the West
Speaker 1: Virginia Kentucky state line to see where or if it
Speaker 1: would ever surface. To our amazement, it reappeared five weeks later,
Speaker 1: almost three hundred miles away in the Clinch River near Kingston, Tennessee.
Speaker 1: We were astonished it must have traveled under another river
Speaker 1: system to arrive to the Clinch River. We are now
Speaker 1: developing equipment that we can capture imagery of the underground
Speaker 1: river system without our team having to dive into those
Speaker 1: underground rivers, with the hopes of capturing the constant location
Speaker 1: of the device and the depth under the sea level
Speaker 1: as well that will be able to explain how these
Speaker 1: rivers are crossing. Other findings are also worth mentioning. We've
Speaker 1: found several species of animals or insects that were unknown
Speaker 1: or thought to not inhabit this region, as well as
Speaker 1: numerous cave drawings that date back over ten thousand years,
Speaker 1: along with artifacts such as pottery from the early fourteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: spears and arrowheads, muskets or black powder rifles, a couple
Speaker 1: of swords. We found knives, shells, some gold and silver
Speaker 1: coins from seventeen hundred Europe, along with bones and I
Speaker 1: mean a lot of bones. These discoveries found miles underground,
Speaker 1: far from known entry points. We report our findings before
Speaker 1: moving further, and it slows down the exploration process because
Speaker 1: we have to wait for another team to go in
Speaker 1: and gather the artifacts. Without us, we would contaminate the scene.
Speaker 1: The real question was how did someone get this far
Speaker 1: into the cave system with torches, as they would have
Speaker 1: to have burnt out well before they got that deep.
Speaker 1: They would have had to carry extra torches with them,
Speaker 1: and why would they have traveled this deep while the
Speaker 1: other team was in our cave. We would go to
Speaker 1: another cave for several weeks until we were given the
Speaker 1: go ahead to continue our explanation of the original cave.
Speaker 1: Rarely were we given any information on what the other
Speaker 1: team's findings revealed, especially when it was about bones or
Speaker 1: modern day items like a shiny new shotgun we had found,
Speaker 1: or the backpack with a West Virginia Park map that
Speaker 1: was printed in twenty eighteen and it was over seven
Speaker 1: thousand feet into the cave system. We would write it
Speaker 1: off to people going beyond their limits and getting lost
Speaker 1: in the cave and losing their belongings as they roamed
Speaker 1: about in the darkness. And as for the other team,
Speaker 1: they were a dull bunch of people with no personality
Speaker 1: yet trying to talk to them, they were tight, left
Speaker 1: about their business. They were almost what we would think
Speaker 1: of as a stiff government or maybe a CIA personality type.
Speaker 1: There were occasions where we would pass them coming or
Speaker 1: going and they wouldn't take the time to speak to anyone.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't drop any clues or share any findings, absolutely nothing.
Speaker 1: Using our newest technology that we had developed was the sphere,
Speaker 1: which was a mobile GPR light hoar sphere that set
Speaker 1: up on a tripod in the middle of chambers, which
Speaker 1: we would leave overnight to scan. The results were beyond belief.
Speaker 1: We have found new tunnels that are blocked by large
Speaker 1: rocks or boulders. The stones are so heavy that several
Speaker 1: men working together could not move them for us to
Speaker 1: explore further. But we knew the boulders had been placed
Speaker 1: there because the scars remained on the floors and walls
Speaker 1: they had been rolled into position. We had a heavy
Speaker 1: hydraulic jack design to lift rocks off of us should
Speaker 1: we become trapped, and we found that this jack could
Speaker 1: move the boulders enough to gain entrance into hidden chambers
Speaker 1: or caverns. And now that I've given you a brief
Speaker 1: description of what we do and how we do it,
Speaker 1: I want to tell you of my account that began
Speaker 1: on Friday, August the thirteenth of all days in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one. We had been mapping out a cave system
Speaker 1: south of Grayson, Kentucky, and we were five miles deep
Speaker 1: into the system when we dropped off of a shelf
Speaker 1: about twenty feet using our climbing gear to discover a
Speaker 1: new passage. It led back east to half a mile
Speaker 1: to an oval shaped chamber, and at the far end
Speaker 1: of the chamber was a large boulder blocking another passage
Speaker 1: that we found by setting up our sphere overnight. The
Speaker 1: following Monday was August the sixteenth, and we analyzed the
Speaker 1: data and we determined it was worth exploring. After moving
Speaker 1: the rock, we followed the passage for another half mile
Speaker 1: and then we decided to back out and call it
Speaker 1: a day. We returned on the seventeenth to the oval
Speaker 1: chamber and we found the rock had rolled back to
Speaker 1: block the entrance. We jacked it back open again and
Speaker 1: placed smaller rocks under it to keep it from rolling
Speaker 1: back while we were in there exploring. We then entered
Speaker 1: the passage and began to map out the system where
Speaker 1: we left off. Through the day, we discovered a labyrinth
Speaker 1: of passages going in all directions. Some were dead ends,
Speaker 1: and some were working their way back to the main cavern.
Speaker 1: The areas that didn't reconnect, we would follow those for
Speaker 1: five hundred feet and then turned back. There were so
Speaker 1: many that we wanted to see, but this system could
Speaker 1: be thoroughly explored. Later. We were getting our bearings and
Speaker 1: taking notes, and we were excited about this discovery. We
Speaker 1: started noticing different items, such as fresh leaves and small
Speaker 1: twigs on the cave floor. They were green, they weren't dead,
Speaker 1: but they shouldn't have been there in the first place.
Speaker 1: In the largest passage, we found a shallow stream with
Speaker 1: a mud and a swet bottom and bank, and in
Speaker 1: that mud we found tracks of all sizes. They were
Speaker 1: human looking tracks. Some were smaller than my feet and
Speaker 1: others were twenty four inches long and ten inches wide. Laurie,
Speaker 1: my female teammate, carefully examined the toes to see if
Speaker 1: there were claw marks, because that would lead us to
Speaker 1: believe that it was a bear. But she found none. Well.
Speaker 1: The day was late and we pulled out again, marking
Speaker 1: our route with illuminated paint of different colors, as we
Speaker 1: always did when exploring new systems. The footprints gave us
Speaker 1: all concern, but it also was exciting. The passage was
Speaker 1: nine feet high and we could not imagine a giant
Speaker 1: of a man walking around in there. But this raised
Speaker 1: questions beyond belief, so we all decided to keep this
Speaker 1: finding to ourselves for the time being. On Wednesday, the eighteenth,
Speaker 1: we found that the rock had again been rolled back
Speaker 1: over the entrance and we had to move it with Jacks. Rodney,
Speaker 1: the archaeologist, said that he was going to bust it
Speaker 1: into pieces if it happened again, and we proceeded to
Speaker 1: the stream where we had left off the previous day
Speaker 1: to find more tracks. We slowly moved along the stream,
Speaker 1: following the direction of the footprints as it flowed down
Speaker 1: the center of the cavern. A quarter of a mile
Speaker 1: through the passage and into the chamber, we discovered some
Speaker 1: of the most disturbing items we had ever found. There
Speaker 1: were numerous shoes of different sizes, including boots and children's sneakers,
Speaker 1: some clothing that appeared to be torn, and some looked
Speaker 1: like it had dried blood on it, and they were
Speaker 1: all in piles like someone had been sleeping on them.
Speaker 1: There were backpacks and coats. There was a hatchet and
Speaker 1: some knives, a couple of firearms, and children's toys such
Speaker 1: as dolls and barbies and action figures. There were balls
Speaker 1: and toy cars lying all about the chamber, and then
Speaker 1: we found a pile of human bones of all sizes,
Speaker 1: including children's, all piled up against the wall at the
Speaker 1: far end of the chamber. Laurie screamed at the top
Speaker 1: of her lungs and began crying uncontrollably, and as the
Speaker 1: others tried to comfort her, out of the darkness of
Speaker 1: a passage at the far end of the chamber near
Speaker 1: the pile of bones, came a scream or a roar
Speaker 1: of a monstrous volume that shook my insides. It lasted
Speaker 1: long time and was immediately answered by another roar from
Speaker 1: a different cavern, and then several more. The team instantly
Speaker 1: began to run toward the exit, with me bringing up
Speaker 1: the rear. I had a feeling that something was behind me,
Speaker 1: and I quickly looked back over my shoulder with my
Speaker 1: high intensity led light, and I illuminated the face of
Speaker 1: a beast that was the size of a refrigerator, only
Speaker 1: ten feet behind me. In that brief instant, I could
Speaker 1: see the beast's lips were curled back, bearing large teeth
Speaker 1: which were like ours except for the canines, which were
Speaker 1: larger in proportion than a human. It had large, round,
Speaker 1: black evil eyes and a flat nose, and everything around
Speaker 1: the face was covered with hair. The animal covered its
Speaker 1: eyes from the light with its hands and screamed in
Speaker 1: pain as if the light heard it, and it shrank
Speaker 1: away from me and my light. It curled up into
Speaker 1: a ball onto the floor of the cave, wailing in pain.
Speaker 1: I was now backing out of the chamber, trying to
Speaker 1: keep the light on the beast, when I must have
Speaker 1: passed the exit and tumbled into a sinkhole. I got
Speaker 1: lucky it was only five feet below the chamber floor.
Speaker 1: It could have been deeper and I would have never
Speaker 1: gotten out of there. I am only five foot four
Speaker 1: to start with, and I weigh less than one hundred
Speaker 1: and ten pounds fully clothed, and I knew if I
Speaker 1: couldn't do something quick, I would end up in that
Speaker 1: bone pile. In front of me, I saw a small
Speaker 1: crevice that looked to me about my size, so I
Speaker 1: dove into it headfirst, and I began to crawl on
Speaker 1: my belly back into the darkness. I was ten feet
Speaker 1: into the crevice when I heard the monster scream into
Speaker 1: the mouth of the crevice behind me, and I could
Speaker 1: feel it reaching into the hole as it started to
Speaker 1: claw at the walls. The creature was so cloth I
Speaker 1: could smell its foul breath, and this gave me a
Speaker 1: surge of strength to move ahead faster. I crawled ahead
Speaker 1: without thinking. I was in survival mode and I wanted
Speaker 1: to get as far from this thing as possible. The
Speaker 1: roars began to fade the further into the passage I went,
Speaker 1: and after an hour, I dropped into a room. Stalactites
Speaker 1: hung from the low ceiling and I had to walk
Speaker 1: hunched over, but at least I could stand. I tried
Speaker 1: to reach my team on the radio, but I got
Speaker 1: nothing in response. If I was going to get out
Speaker 1: of there, I had to move upward while avoiding these creatures.
Speaker 1: I had to get to the surface. That's all I
Speaker 1: could think of. I turned down the intensity of my
Speaker 1: light to get more life from my batteries, and I
Speaker 1: continued walking and crawling. I wandered the uncharted passages and
Speaker 1: caverns alone for hours, not knowing where I was or
Speaker 1: if I was moving to freedom. I lost all sense
Speaker 1: of time, and I didn't know if it was day
Speaker 1: or night. And to make matters worse, not long after that,
Speaker 1: I was down to my last spare battery pack. The
Speaker 1: only light I would have after those batteries died was
Speaker 1: my cell phone. I had turned it off long ago
Speaker 1: to save it as a last resort for light. And
Speaker 1: the exhaustion set in, and I clicked off my light
Speaker 1: and I sat in the blackness, and I fell asleep.
Speaker 1: I woke to the distant sounds of clicking and some
Speaker 1: sort of gibberish that I didn't understand. The sounds weren't close,
Speaker 1: thank goodness, but they were looking for me. Once. It
Speaker 1: sounded so human that I thought it might be in
Speaker 1: my team members calling for me, and I almost shouted
Speaker 1: to them, but I waited to make sure, and I'm
Speaker 1: glad I did, because minutes later another roar came from
Speaker 1: the same direction. I drank the last of my water
Speaker 1: and I ate the final protein bar. I then turned
Speaker 1: my light off and I curled into a fetal position,
Speaker 1: hoping the sounds would stop so I could move again. Strangely,
Speaker 1: I felt an evil presence near me, and I knew
Speaker 1: the creatures were near, but still I waited. Hours later,
Speaker 1: the noises stopped, and I assumed they had given up
Speaker 1: their search for me. So I got moving, always trying
Speaker 1: to move upward. Freedom was above me, and I had
Speaker 1: to get there. Two maybe three days later, I felt
Speaker 1: hope slipping away. I had lost all sense of time,
Speaker 1: and I was weakened now from hydration, and I was
Speaker 1: starving to death. I only used my headlamp briefly. I
Speaker 1: would click it on, look ahead as far as I
Speaker 1: could see, and then turn it off, and then I
Speaker 1: would feel my way to something until I needed light again.
Speaker 1: While alone in a place this silent, your sense of
Speaker 1: hearing heightens. There or no other noises to interfere with
Speaker 1: what you were hearing. While taking a break, and without
Speaker 1: the noise of my movements, I heard the hum of traffic.
Speaker 1: I moved toward the sound until I saw a faint
Speaker 1: rays of light penetrating the passage wall. I was overjoyed,
Speaker 1: and I was filled with a surge of energy. There
Speaker 1: was a small crevice that would be tight even for
Speaker 1: my small body to escape through, but I pushed through
Speaker 1: it anyway into the sunlight. I was standing at the
Speaker 1: base of a cliff that I would later find out
Speaker 1: was next to Kentucky State Route seven. Cars were speeding
Speaker 1: pass below me. I had made it out alive. My
Speaker 1: phone still had a charge, and I called my supervisor. Well.
Speaker 1: She was ecstatic to hear from me. She said, they
Speaker 1: picked up my GPS tracker twenty minutes ago. My tracker
Speaker 1: must have started broadcasting when I got near the crevice,
Speaker 1: and state troopers were on their way, she said. The
Speaker 1: police took me back to my hotel room, and I
Speaker 1: felt like I drank a gallon of water while we drove. Now,
Speaker 1: I wanted to get a shower in something to eat,
Speaker 1: but as I got out of the car, four men
Speaker 1: approached and ushered me into a small hotel conference room.
Speaker 1: I assumed they knew I was exhausted in Hungary and
Speaker 1: that this meeting would not take long, But I was wrong.
Speaker 1: Two of the men were from the Department of the Interior,
Speaker 1: one was a federal Game and Fish official, and the
Speaker 1: last was with the US Geological Survey. The date was
Speaker 1: August twenty second, and they wanted me to recount the
Speaker 1: last ninety six hours my scanner was still operating. From
Speaker 1: that data, we found that I had traveled eleven miles
Speaker 1: underground from the point at which I fell into the sinkhole.
Speaker 1: They began asking me about the bear we had encountered. Well,
Speaker 1: I was a biology major, but I knew damn well
Speaker 1: that the creature was not a bear, and I said so.
Speaker 1: I described the creature in great detail, but still they
Speaker 1: continued calling it a bear. They questioned me for three hours.
Speaker 1: At some point I told them I had answered every
Speaker 1: question and that I was done, and after walking out,
Speaker 1: I headed to my room and I took a long shower.
Speaker 1: Some food was brought to me, so I ate like
Speaker 1: I had never tasted food, and then I went to sleep.
Speaker 1: I was still a bit confused when I woke, but
Speaker 1: I felt rested and ready to find my teammates. I
Speaker 1: went to all their rooms, and the only one who
Speaker 1: remained there was Tony. He told me that Laurie was
Speaker 1: so upset after the event that she had to be
Speaker 1: sedated and was taken to a local hospital. She had
Speaker 1: been released and sent home. The other members of the
Speaker 1: team had been put on leaving sent home. They had
Speaker 1: all been notified that I made it out, and Tony
Speaker 1: said they allowed him to stay because he was the
Speaker 1: only one who wasn't freaking out. I think that came
Speaker 1: from his military training. I later learned that a task
Speaker 1: force had come in and Tony guided them back into
Speaker 1: the cave. There were way too many people there to
Speaker 1: be looking for a bear, though their main mission, Tony
Speaker 1: later decided, was to gather the human remains in clothing.
Speaker 1: Tony searched the area with those men, and he found
Speaker 1: no sign of a bear, and then they made castings
Speaker 1: of several tracks in the mud before they destroyed all
Speaker 1: the evidence they could find. They spent days in that
Speaker 1: cave system searching for that bear, they said, but they
Speaker 1: never found an animal. And then it occurred to me
Speaker 1: that I may have been the only one who had
Speaker 1: seen this creature, because Tony never mentioned it. He kept
Speaker 1: saying they searched for a bear, and I think that
Speaker 1: is what he thought we were dealing with, and I
Speaker 1: had never told him about the creature. I had seen
Speaker 1: only the men in the conference room. I was going
Speaker 1: to leave the next day, but that evening we went
Speaker 1: to the bar, and there we found two members of
Speaker 1: the task force drinking. After several drinks, one of them
Speaker 1: began to talk. This fellow told us that this team
Speaker 1: was a unit of special forces that were used to
Speaker 1: hunt down Bigfoot. I had yet to think of a bigfoot,
Speaker 1: and I was stuck on an unknown monster until then,
Speaker 1: and bigfoot was a myth, wasn't it. He continued to
Speaker 1: tell us that this was only the second underground assignment
Speaker 1: they had been on, and that his unit hated the
Speaker 1: darkness of the cave systems, even though they were equipped
Speaker 1: with special equipment that allowed them to see in the
Speaker 1: dark zone, or the part of the cave where there
Speaker 1: was a complete absence of light. He said, we were
Speaker 1: some of the luckiest people he had ever met, and
Speaker 1: my falling into that sinkhole gave all my friends an
Speaker 1: opportunity to escape because it had captured the interest of
Speaker 1: the bigfoot trying to catch me. He admitted that the
Speaker 1: government has proof that these animals are traveling underground as
Speaker 1: much as they are in the moonlight, and there is
Speaker 1: also evidence of them kidnapping people and eating them. That
Speaker 1: was obvious to me I had seen the chamber with
Speaker 1: a pile of bones. He was about to continue with
Speaker 1: more information. I mean, this guy was a real bliber mouth.
Speaker 1: But one of the men who questioned me grabbed a
Speaker 1: hold of him by the shoulder and said that that
Speaker 1: was enough, soldier, and you should turn in. This fellow
Speaker 1: then sat down and he asked us what we were told. Well,
Speaker 1: at first we were hesitant to tell him, but we
Speaker 1: did so anyway, to which he told us us that
Speaker 1: the soldier was drunk and he was telling tall tales
Speaker 1: to scare us, and we shouldn't put much faith in
Speaker 1: what he was saying. The next day, we were informed
Speaker 1: that our project had lost its funding and we were
Speaker 1: all terminated and were given a year's wages a severance pay.
Speaker 1: I've kept in touch with the others, and it seems
Speaker 1: that I'm the only one who has been able to
Speaker 1: find work in this field. Currently, I do geological and
Speaker 1: soul analysis for a general contractor for building foundations. None
Speaker 1: of our group have returned to the darkness of the
Speaker 1: underworld and its secrets that we loved and cherished up
Speaker 1: until that August week. I have been left with more
Speaker 1: questions than I care to imagine, was that a Bigfoot
Speaker 1: we encountered in that cave? Are they using the cave
Speaker 1: systems to travel undetected? Do they really kidnap people in
Speaker 1: eats them? What does the government know? What was the
Speaker 1: real purpose of the government funding of our expeditions and
Speaker 1: mapping out the cave systems in the first place. Why
Speaker 1: won't the government inform people of these animals and the dangers?
Speaker 1: And that's the end of her story. Have y'all ever
Speaker 1: heard a story like that. I've never heard anything like that.
Speaker 1: Now again, like I said in my last video, I
Speaker 1: don't know if any of these stories that I read
Speaker 1: are true, but this was a sure enough story email
Speaker 1: to me. She has enough information on the job and
Speaker 1: the you know, the spielunking equipment and all that stuff
Speaker 1: that adds a little bit of credibility to the story.
Speaker 1: But you know, who knows either way, It was a
Speaker 1: real good story. And I tell you what, you couldn't
Speaker 1: pay me to go into one of those caves. And
Speaker 1: it's not because I think Bigfoot is in there. I
Speaker 1: am not terribly clost her, but I've read articles and
Speaker 1: I've seen videos where people get stuck in these caves.
Speaker 1: They can send in twenty or thirty men and they
Speaker 1: cannot get them unstuck, and the people just have to
Speaker 1: lay there and die. What a horrible, horrible way to die.
Speaker 1: And I just I can't. And I've seen other videos
Speaker 1: with these guys. They squeak through these real tight rock formations,
Speaker 1: or they'll be flat on their stomach and the rock
Speaker 1: is just right down on them. I always think, man,
Speaker 1: if that rock formation shifted just a fraction of an inch,
Speaker 1: it would just squash you right there. I know everything
Speaker 1: you know. I know that's probably not the way it works,
Speaker 1: but it could anyway. I don't want to get stuck
Speaker 1: in a dark cave somewhere and die in the dark.
Speaker 1: That's just me. But anyway, Jenna, thank you for sending
Speaker 1: this story. I really admire your profession. You're a pretty
Speaker 1: brave girl. All Right, that's gonna wind this podcast up.
Speaker 1: I hope you guys enjoyed it. We'll see you on
Speaker 1: the next Thank you really